Fewer People Are Moving Out of Rural Counties Since COVID-19

The onset of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in March 2020 altered the day-to-day routines of most people living in the United States and changed migration patterns in rural places. As discussed in a February 2024 Amber Waves article, the population of U.S. rural (nonmetro) counties has grown since 2020. After years of population decline, rural net migration rates in the first year of the pandemic (2020–21) were positive at 0.47 percent, indicating more people were moving into rural areas than out of them.

The increase in rural net migration since 2020 could be because the number of people moving into rural areas increased compared with years prior or because the number of people moving away from rural areas decreased, or both. Data available from the U.S. Postal Service change-of-address records show out-migration and in-migration separately, allowing researchers to better identify the source of the growth. The growth in most rural counties is from the combination of two trends: a slowdown in the rate at which people had been leaving rural counties since 2020 and relatively steady in-migration from urban counties. In most rural counties, out-migration fell markedly with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and stayed low through early 2023. With fewer people leaving rural areas, the relatively stable rates of in-migration meant that many rural places were able to reduce or reverse earlier net population losses.

The rate of people moving within the United States has been declining since the economic recession that began in 2007 and reached historic lows in recent years because of population aging, housing market conditions, economic changes, and the rise in dual-earning households and remote work, which meant people did not have to move for jobs based outside their hometowns. Migration declined even more with the COVID-19 pandemic. Change-of-address data show that starting in March 2020, out-migration away from rural counties dropped considerably. The median number of people leaving rural counties in the first year of the pandemic was 192 fewer per 10,000 in population than in 2017–18. Almost all rural counties (84 percent) saw less population loss from out-migration in the pandemic years than they had in 2017–18, and that decline continued through March 2023. On balance, more people are staying in rural counties and the slowdown in out-migration, exacerbated by COVID, has continued, even years later.